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Actual Mileage for Ford Escape Hybrid

I just read through all of the comments, doing a little research about the FEH. With gas prices going north, and rumors of it stabilizing around $3/gal (it's about $2.50 here for 87 now) I may consider selling my current car (03 Hyundai Tiburon, averages about 20mpg up to about 28 highway) on a FEH.

I had a Honda Insight for about a year from March 02 to May 03, and learned a lot. The comments about how the driver affects the fuel efficiency are extremely true. With a vehicle like the Insight, you could really see what affected mileage, as the affects were accentuated more. I was able to get 72mpg on a highway trip once, but my commute would usually fall between 50-55mpg, which was on the low side.

I traded it off due to my short commute. I live 2 miles from where I work, and the poor little Insight just didn't have room to stretch it's legs to regenerate. I found myself wanting some way to passivly recharge it. I also found that a much more capacitive battery and a more powerful motor would have helped greatly.

If I end up moving next year, and live further away, and gas prices continue to climb, I may just sell off the Tiburon and pick up a FEH. I wonder if my company's discount through Ford will apply...

Actual Mileage for Ford Escape Hybrid

Have had a 4WD Escape Hybrid for 5 months now, and have never gotten more than 310 miles on a single tank. Strangely, whenever I go to fill up (I run the car until there's an eighth of a tank left), it always fills up to 10.5 gallons, but the car has a 15 gallon tank, so there's 4.5 gallons that are not being accounted for. The dealer says in New Jersey (where I live) the gasoline sold contains high amounts of sulfur, which coat the gas sensors, and this causes the fuel gauge to misread the amount of actual fuel in the tank. Does this make sense? Anybody else have this problem?

Actual Mileage for Ford Escape Hybrid

King of Breath-

Interesting screen name. Anyway, the gas gauge in the FEH is different from any car I've ever owned or driven. Most cars stay pegged at Full for many miles before the gauge even starts to move. Not the FEH - the gauge moves down quickly at first, and hits Empty with about 2 gallons left.

If you are filling up with the gauge reading 1/8th, 310 miles is about right. How many "miles to empty" are you showing when you fill up? I refilled with about 20 miles to empty (~370 miles driven) and could only put 13 gallons in.

So, if you're getting 310 miles on 10.5 gallons, that's 29.5+ MPG. Nothing wrong with that. If you want to get more miles per tank, drive past 1/8 of a tank until the computer gets to about 25 miles to empty. Trust the computer!

Actual Mileage for Ford Escape Hybrid

I agree in that the mpg does work out to a good number. My problem is that I don't trust those trip computers. They are notoriously inaccurate in all other cars I've driven, but I'll give your suggestion a try. The screen name is a college nickname that we gave to one of our friends who always had bad breath because he ate too much tuna fish. Gross, but that's the story behind it. Thanks for your advice!

Actual Mileage for Ford Escape Hybrid

Has anyone been folowing "Plug-in hybrid" retrofitting? Is it viable with a FEH? Would additional battery capacity and the resulting range / lessened fuel (gas) consumption be a worthwhile endeavor? Has anyone out there tried this conversion yet? I'd be interested comments...

Actual Mileage for Ford Escape Hybrid

I didn't notice if anyone else had mentioned the effect of ethonol blends on the Escape Hybrid milage. I got some of the 10% blend in Minnesota or Kansas and it reduced my highway milage from 32MPG to the 22 to 25MPG range. I don't know if milage is reduced as much in regular cars but the Escape doesn't appear to like ethanol. I'm not sure I didn't get more than 10% ethanol. The 85% ethanol is selling about 40 cents a gallon cheaper than unleaded so there is some incentive to put more ethanol into the mix and increase the profit per gallon. Anyway, I would avoid any fuel with ethanol if you want to brag about your gas milage.

Actual Mileage for Ford Escape Hybrid

Ross, regarding your question about "Plug in retrofit", I think it is probably viable for the FEH. Ford seems to make it difficult to drive the FEH in the electric mode but I don't know if that is due to motor limitations or a desire to save the battery. If the FEH computer was reprogrammed to favor the electric mode, I think the gas milage could be much better. Keeping the car running on the battery for as long as possible is one of the best ways to get high gas milage but you really have to have a light foot and accelerate very slowly the way it is programmed now. The addition of more batteries will not make the gas milage any better unless you can get the thing to run more on battery power. Hooking up a big battery pack that you charge at home should not be that big of a problem but you also need a way to reprogram the computer to take advantage of the battery. I think we will have companies offering battery packs and reprogramming if gas prices continue to rise and there are enough hybrids on the road to make it profitable.

Actual Mileage for Ford Escape Hybrid

Right now we have a full size truck and are getting killed on gas cost. We do alot of highway driving. For instance, I drive 136 miles roundtrip each day for work. This drive consists of about 80 miles at 70 miles per hour and the remainer around 50 miles per hour.

From what I have reviewed here, I can expect 27-30 mpg with the Hybrid AWD escape under these driving conditions.

At the above gas mileage, why not just get a Honda CRV or Toyota Rav4? Any thoughts on this?

Actual Mileage for Ford Escape Hybrid

Bob, you don't want a hybrid if you do mainly highway driving. On the highway they are mostly running like a conventional vehicle with the extra load of batteries and motors. They do a little better than a regular gasoline version of the same vehicle because the gasoline engine can be smaller and run in a more efficient mode. My V6 Escape would get 25MPG at 70 and my Hybrid gets almost exactly the same. In town the Hybrid beats the V6 by about 10MPG.